Tavern Brawl

Tavern Brawl is one of Hearthstone's lighter game modes. A weekly event, a new Tavern Brawl begins each Wednesday (Thursday in Asian regions), ending the following Monday. Outside of these times, the mode is not available for play. See the schedule for this week's times.

Each Tavern Brawl presents a limited time opportunity to face other players in special matches with unique rules. These might be requiring players to use special pre-made decks, adding random cards or minions, or changing the very rules of ability activation or mana use. Some Tavern Brawls allow the player to construct special decks especially for the challenge from within the game mode itself, while others provide powerful premade decks, or entirely random decks, and some Brawls even see players take control of special heroes with their own Hero Powers. Some Brawls feature Tavern Brawl cards, special cards not playable normally, as well as boss cards from adventures such as One Night in Karazhan. Each week sees a fresh Tavern Brawl, with its own unique rules.

As well as being matched against other random opponents, players are able to challenge players on their friends list to a Tavern Brawl, as a special type of Friendly Challenge.[1]

An intentionally "fun" game mode, Tavern Brawls offer unique limited time experiences, with far less of a competitive focus than other game modes. This makes them good for quick matches, friendly games and accumulating gold through quests and cumulative wins. With many Brawls incorporating random card generation or minion summoning, winning a Tavern Brawl often involves a fair amount of luck, as well as the ability to adapt to and deal with the situation at hand. Tavern Brawls help to break up the focused rigours of Hearthstone's other game modes by providing a fresh twist on the game's rules each week.

Tavern Brawls are intended to be highly accessible, even for players without extensive card collections.[2] However, Tavern Brawls are not unlocked until the player reaches level 20 with at least one class.

While most weeks see a brand new Tavern Brawl, just under half are reprises of previous Brawls. Since each Brawl is only available for 5 days, this allows players to enjoy old favourites again, and avoids Brawls becoming overly similar due to a desire to explore past mechanics. Most reprises are simple repeat outings, identical to the original Brawl, but some involve changes, such as fixing bugs or balance issues, or even adding in extra elements.

The following table lists Tavern Brawls that have appeared more than once, including brief notes of any known changes.

"Encounter at the crossroads! Pick a class. Let's see what's in your deck this time!"

This Brawl sees players competing with almost entirely randomised pre-made decks. Players can choose any class, and will then receive a deck randomly composed of neutral and class-specific cards. Decks are composed of 30 cards, but may break the usual card limitation of 2 copies per deck (1 copy per deck for legendaries), allowing any number of copies within a deck. This could be a reference to world PvP common at the Horde town Crossroads, which was prone to random encounters.

This Tavern Brawl sees players doing battle with randomized decks. Each deck contains numerous copies of Shifter Zerus, as well as some random spells for the chosen class. Each player also begins their first turn with three Mana Crystals, effectively starting the game on turn three.

This Tavern Brawl sees players competing with randomised pre-made decks. Upon queuing for the Brawl, players are assigned to a random class and given a randomised deck filled with class spells and either Beast or Elemental minions. One player is always granted a Beast deck, while their opponent is assigned to an Elemental deck.

"Spiders have overrun everything, including your deck! Whatever class you play, your deck will be TEEMING with Webspinners."

This Tavern Brawl sees players doing battle with special pre-made decks, each teeming with Webspinners. Players can choose any class, with each match generating a unique deck filled with 7 randomly selected spells for that class, and 23 Webspinners.

"You collided with another Hero and your decks are mixed up! Pick another hero at the start of the game; your deck will be a random combination of the two classes!"

This Tavern Brawl sees players doing battle with randomly constructed decks, using a combination of two selected classes. To enter the Brawl the player first chooses a class, after which a deck is randomly generated containing 19 cards suitable to that class. Following the mulligan, the player then chooses from one of three random "second classes", resulting in 11 cards suitable to that class being shuffled into their deck.

Tavern Brawls use unique decks, which do not take up any of the player's regular deck slots.[9][10] Players create Tavern Brawls within the Tavern Brawl interface, and the deck is lost when the Brawl is retired.

The composition of Tavern Brawl decks depends on the Brawl. Many are constructed partially or wholly from the player's own collection, with some seeing random cards added to the deck made. Other Brawls feature premade decks, either with specific (and often unique) cards, or entirely randomised.

Brawl decks will not require or allow the player to use more than 2 copies of a card from their own collection, or more than 1 in the case of legendaries.[11]

Most Brawls require the player to choose a class, either during deck construction or in place of deck construction, but some instead randomly assign players to take control of special heroes, with their own decks.

Players earn a free Classiccard pack for their first Tavern Brawl win each week.

No additional rewards are offered after the initial win. This is intended to prevent players from feeling they have to play,[17] and may also be in order to allow design space for unusual and potentially uneven arrangements, which could otherwise prove frustrating for those seeking to earn repeated rewards through wins.

Very rarely a Brawl will offer other rewards, such as a unique card back, in place of the usual card pack.

The card pack reward was originally announced to end when the "launch event" ended.[1][18] However, having begun in June 2015, it seems likely the reward is now intended to be ongoing.

Tavern Brawls are released in the Americas region first, followed by the Europe, Taiwan/Korea and China regions, simultaneously, around 4 hours later. As a result, the Americas region sometimes experiences technical issues following the release of a new Brawl, serving as a testbed for the latest modifications. Despite not directly modifying other game modes, the release of a Tavern Brawl nevertheless involves changes which can cause disconnections and extended downtime for the entire game, making this testing period necessary to limit disruption to a single region. The four hour delay following the Americas release is intended to allow time for the developers to attend to any stability issues or severe bugs, before launching the Brawl in other regions.

As of December 2015, additional testing measures are planned, to reduce related stability issues.[24] However, the changes will "take some time to implement".[24]

Tavern Brawl cards are special cards, heroes and Hero Powers only available to players when participating in a specific Tavern Brawl. These are usually provided through pre-made decks, although they may be granted to players directly during matches. Tavern Brawl cards usually match the theme of the Brawl, and often feature fun or outlandish powers not seen in regular cards.

For a full list of known cards, see Tavern Brawl card. Featured Tavern Brawl cards for each Brawl can be found on individual Brawl pages, or in the Previous Brawls section.

"I'm not exaggerating when I say that each week, people tell me that we've created the greatest brawl ever, at the same time that others are saying it's by far the worst." - Ben Brode[25]

As of October 2016, Tavern Brawls are primarily designed by Pat Nagle (the namesake of Nat Pagle) and Dan Emmons.[26] The two designers "sit in a room and brainstorm", with additional inspiration from the internet and other team members. The ideas are then playtested and iterated upon with the rest of Team 5.[27][28]Tim Erskine serves as producer for Tavern Brawl content.[29]

According to designers Emmons and Nagle, the most important goal of Tavern Brawls is to provide variety and freshness, "mixing up" the standard game experience of ladder or Arena play, and providing players a reason and reward for logging in regularly.[26] The "Surprise" of the new Brawl each week is also "really big" for the developers.[26]

The designers originally considered having a ranked ladder for Tavern Brawl mode, including a Legend rank.[30] However, they decided not to in order to avoid players feeling pressure to play, instead adopting a strong focus on "fun".[30] For example, the card pack reward for a single win provides a reward for trying each Brawl, without creating any sense of compulsion for players who didn't that week's Brawl.

The first 19 Tavern Brawls, by popularity. Green Brawls are premade; brown use constructed decks; blue are randomised.

The Tavern Brawl mode is also designed to help with the game's accessibility. This is partly achieved through Brawls that don't require players to own a lot of cards, and also in the 'free' card pack reward each week, helping players to build their collections.[30]

Tavern Brawls allow for experimentation, and are sometime used to test or develop new mechanics, allowing the developers to observe player reactions. This time spent developing the required technology makes it relatively simple to then implement the mechanic elsewhere in the game.[31] Examples of this process include Discover. However, the developers balance the ease of experimentation with a desire to keep new mechanics fresh for players to discover in new sets. Ben Brode explains:

"There are pros and cons. The pros are obviously that we would get more confidence on balance. One of the cons is that part of the fun of card games is exploration. If we are putting it out there and a lot of it gets solved or figured out, then when we release a set it isn’t as crazy and exciting as it could be."[32]

The brevity of Brawls also frees the developers to experiment with a variety of designs, since "even if [the developers] make a really bad one" it will only last a few days.[26] This allows the designers to create Brawls that target specific groups of players, and take risks with their designs.[26]

The designers learned from early Brawls like Spiders, Spiders, EVERYWHERE! with decks composed solely of minions, incorporating a small number of random spells into later minion-focused Brawls such as ShiftCon.[30]

Tavern Brawls were being discussed by the developers prior to the launch of Hearthstone.[33] However, it was not until June 10, 2015, more than a year after the game's release, that the feature would be announced to players.

The Tavern Brawl system was added with Patch 2.7.0.9166 on June 15, but was not activated until June 17, when the first Tavern Brawl, Showdown at Blackrock Mountain, went live. In the interim period before the first Brawl, the as yet blank fourth button on the game box would begin to sparkle each time the player entered the main menu.

Captain Blackheart's Treasure was planned for release in October 2015, in order to debut the upcoming Discover mechanic.[27] However, technical problems prevented this, and the keyword was instead announced at BlizzCon 2015 with its accompanying adventure, The League of Explorers.

On November 4, 2015, the first cooperative Tavern Brawl was released, Unite Against Mechazod!, marking the first cooperative two-player experience within the game. At the time of its creation, this was the most difficult Brawl to create yet.[27]

In December 2015, with disconnections and downtime in the Europe region coinciding with the release of the latest Tavern Brawl becoming a regular occurrence, Blizzard announced that they would be adding additional testing measures to help prevent this in the future.[24] Shortly afterwards it was announced that the release times for Tavern Brawls in each region would be changing: instead of debuting in the Europe region at 4pm UTC, followed by Americas at 6pm and other regions at 7pm, new Brawls would now debut in the Americas region at 5pm UTC, then in all other regions 9pm.[34][3]

As of October 2016 Randomonium is "by far the most popular Brawl", both in terms of number of games played and hours in total spent playing.[35][36] Designer Dean Ayala explains, "[Randomonium] continues to be one of the mostly highly played brawls by unique user in addition to one of the most highly played brawls by individual user. Basically this means a ton of people play it, and the ones that do play it play a ton of games."[37]

The developers considered placing the Tavern Brawl button in the third slot (currently occupied by the Arena button), which would have provided a more symmetrical appearance given the smaller amount of space available for lettering on the fourth button. However, they decided against it, possibly due to length issues in languages other than English.[38]

On July 29, 2015, Showdown at Blackrock Mountain was mistakenly reprised as the seventh Tavern Brawl, sparking widespread complaint from players, who assumed this to be the intended Brawl. The correct Brawl, Too Many Portals!, replaced it around an hour later, but not until many players had already played and won games in the former Brawl, earning their weekly card pack. Zeriyah remarked, "Sometimes when you play with dimensional space, the wrong Tavern Brawl gets sucked through the portal. Whoops."[39] A similar error has taken place with subsequent Brawls. On July 20, 2016, Battle of the Builds was reprised as the fifty-eighth Tavern Brawl, but bugs quickly became evident. Blizzard announced a few hours later that the Brawl "wasn't behaving" and replaced it with another reprise, Idols of Azeroth.[40]

Following the Gift Exchange Tavern Brawl, the 2015 winter break saw a repeat of Randomonium rather than another new Tavern Brawl. Ben Brode explained that this was partly due to there being "nobody in the office over the break to fix things if they go wrong, which new brawls are more likely to do."[41]

The popularity of the Tavern Brawl game mode in Hearthstone has led to its adoption in other Blizzard games. Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm saw the introduction of the "Weekly Brawl" and "Heroes Brawl" game modes on March 22 and April 10, 2016, respectively, less than a year after the Hearthstone format's launch;[42][43] while "PvP Brawls" were added to World of Warcraft on April 5, 2017.[44] While the Tavern label is specific to Hearthstone, the term Brawl has thus become shorthand for an "alternative way to play", featuring special and regularly changing twists on the game's normal ruleset, with an emphasis on fun, "crazy" and "unique" matches.[42]

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